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But work at two New Zealand hospitals - which he did not want to name - left him severely burnt out and needing time off from the profession for one and a half years.

Shand described the hospitals as having "chronic and toxic" work environments.

"At lunch time everyday, I would go to the cafe and wouldn't want to talk to anybody else, sit in the toilets and cry and eat lunch by myself, and then go back and do my job like nothing was going on," he said.

"Then I'd come home and just go to bed, and I did that for a couple of weeks and my fiancee pointed out that probably wasn't normal."

He said the lack of support and staffing meant working "ridiculous hours" and left a sense of guilt among doctors taking any time off.

"We all go into medicine wanting to be good people ... but you go to the hospital and there's just not quite enough of us," he said.

Shand said patients were being seen as "extra work" and in some cases each new referral was resented.

"When you have more work than you can do in a day, every new referral sort of becomes almost an extra assault and instead of seeing it as a human who needs treatment and help you kind of resent the person," he said.

"Doctors at hospital become very snarky with each other ... very rude to GPs and other staff members, and we sort of take out our frustration of the workload on each other."

He had to give up on renal medicine and only recently returned to work as a part-time general practitioner in a Manurewa clinic.

"It is sad having to quit your dream, but it is the more pragmatic solution," Shand said.

Dr Tony Fernando, senior lecturer at the University of Auckland School of Medicine, said Shand's experience was the norm rather than the exception.

A survey by the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, which represents 90 per cent of doctors and dentists working in New Zealand hospitals, found half of all public hospital specialists to be suffering from high levels of burnout.

"We're finding that doctors, clinicians, nurses are losing compassion and are unable to care any more," Fernando said.

"Not just because they're weak or tired, but it's because of a system issue. If the system is broken, people will lose compassion."

Dr Tony Fernando Fernando, a psychiatrist and sleep specialist, has been conducting research into doctor burnout in New Zealand. Photo / Nick Reed